[ad_1]
From: TT
Published:
Updated:
Photo: Alex Brandon / AP / TT
Two Secret Service agents protect the audience during one of Donald Trump’s speeches at Nevada’s Carson City airport in October.
More than 130 Secret Service agents who have worked to protect the president of the United States, Donald Trump, have been infected with the coronavirus or have been in close contact with an infected person, reports the Washington Post.
At the same time, new high numbers of infected people are being reported across the United States.
According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 188,000 new infections were reported in the United States on Friday, and another nearly 1,600 people died as a result of the virus.
46 of the 50 states see the number of infections skyrocket and 30 new records have been set in recent days, according to The New York Times.
Donald Trump said on Friday that a vaccine can begin to be distributed in a few weeks and that the entire population will have access to it in April of next year.
Biden urges action
However, it does not intend to impose much stricter rules and definitely no closures.
“Whatever happens in the future, who knows which government it will affect, I suppose time will tell, but I can say that this administration will not introduce a blockade,” Trump told some people in the Rose Garden at the White House on Friday.
In response to Trump’s remarks, one of Joe Biden’s aides said the future president is also not planning a total shutdown of the country.
Biden himself asked in an earlier written statement that Trump act and that the virus does not wait for him to become president and address the crisis.
More local quarantine rules
And several leaders at the state level are now stepping up their efforts, including in states loyal to Trump. For example, North Dakota, which has the highest level of infections and deaths per capita in the United States, faces mouth protection requirements and restrictions on, among other things, school sports in the coming month.
Almost half of all states now have some kind of quarantine rules.
Among all those infected, there is also a large group of Secret Service agents, who work to protect the president and those closest to him in the White House.
130 officers have been ordered to self-isolate. The outbreak is believed to be related to the intense travel just before the Nov. 3 election, when Trump held ten campaign meetings in 48 hours, which according to the Washington Post forced the security service to send five groups of at least 20 people.
Ten percent affected
The 130 make up ten percent of the Secret Service force that works with security around the president and vice president. Since March, more than 300 Secret Service agents have been forced into self-quarantine and the virus outbreak is believed to have a real impact on how security around the president is handled.
“The lack of more than 100 agents is a big problem,” a former White House chief of staff told the Washington Post.
Trump and his immediate circle have been criticized by security experts for not taking Secret Service risks seriously, especially the president was criticized when he himself fell ill with covid-19 and then briefly left Walter Reed Hospital to greet from a car. to his followers.
“He doesn’t even pretend to worry (about the security of the officers) anymore,” a member of Trump’s security entourage said anonymously at the time, in early October.
Published:
